Dirty (20 page)

I hate roses.

“Elle?”

I put a hand over my mouth to keep from smelling them. “Take them away.”

He hesitated, then leaned out the front door and tossed them into the garbage pail next to my small concrete porch. He came in and shut the door behind him. I put my hand up to keep him from coming closer.

“What kind of woman doesn’t like roses?” He looked so perplexed I might have laughed if I wasn’t still so distraught.

“I’m allergic to roses,” I lied. “I told you to leave!”

“No.” He shook his head. “Not until you tell me what the hell’s the matter.”

I pushed past him into the living room, but he snagged my elbow and turned me. “Let me go.”

He didn’t. “Is there someone else?”

“Why is that the first question men always ask?” I jerked my arm out of his grasp.

“Is there?”

“Fuck you, Dan.” My throat hurt. My head hurt. I didn’t want to be having this conversation, but it had begun and I didn’t know how to stop it.

His hand went to the throat of his shirt, working the buttons. “If that’s what you want.”

I backed away from him. “Very clever. Get out.”

He advanced on me, his shirt hanging open. I had never seen him look this way, like storms brewed in his eyes. They’d gone dark, no longer brilliant blue-green but the color of a lake before a storm. His mouth had thinned into a grim, determined line, and I suddenly found it difficult to believe I’d ever seen him smile.

“Don’t tell me you don’t want it.”

I opened my mouth to tell him that very thing, but no words would come. I stammered something I meant to sound negative but only made him quirk his mouth into something too scary to be a grin.

He pulled off his shirt and started with his belt. I took another step back. My heart hammered. I couldn’t look away from his face. His anger. His determination.

“Tell me, Elle.” He frowned.

I took a few deep breaths. “I told you in the beginning, Dan.”

“Yeah, you don’t date.” He sneered, looking me up and down. “You’ll let me fuck you seven ways to Sunday, but you won’t let me take you on a date. Elle, what difference does it make what we call it?”

“It makes a difference to me!” Tears would have eased the tightness in my throat, but even then I couldn’t find them. “It’s something, Dan, I can’t—I don’t—I just don’t want…I don’t…”

I shook my head, took another few deep breaths while he stared at me. “I don’t want a boyfriend.”

“Why not?” He buckled his belt again, with angry hands, then started on his shirt. “I’m good enough to get you off but not be your boyfriend? Is that it? You’re ashamed? You’re married? What?”

“I’m not married.”

“Then what,” he said, softer, buttoning his last button and moving toward me again. “Because I thought we were past this bullshit.”

I let him touch me for a moment before I pulled away. I sat on my couch, a pillow hugged in my arms to create distance between us. I didn’t indicate he should sit, too, but he did.

“I thought you liked fucking me.” The explanation was lame, but the best I could manage at the moment.

“I do. I do, Elle. But I like being with you, too. Don’t you like being with me? Just hanging out?”

He sounded vulnerable, and it made me hate myself. It made me hate him. I pulled on the tassels of my pillow and tried to find kind words, not cruel, to explain myself.

“I don’t want a boyfriend,” I repeated. “I don’t want that commitment. A boyfriend is flowers and holding hands and having to buy cute little cards for holidays. A boyfriend is an investment, an emotional investment, and I don’t want to give it and I…I don’t want to expect it.”

He made a noise low in his throat, and I wanted to smack him for understanding me even when I wasn’t being clear. “You don’t want to expect me to want to be with you, do things with you, that aren’t just sex?”

“It’s not that I never had one,” I replied. “A boyfriend. I did.”

“And he hurt you.”

“It wasn’t that simple.”

“It never is.” He rumpled his hair with a sigh. “But all other men should pay for his sins?”

“Something like that, yes.” Yet again, that wasn’t really what I meant.

“Elle…” Dan seemed at a rare loss for words. “We’ve been together for four months, and I still don’t feel like I know anything about you.”

The tassel unraveled beneath my nervous, twining fingers, and I balled the threads in my palm. “You know lots of things about me.”

“Yeah. I know how to make you come.”

“That’s something, Dan.”

He frowned. “It’s not enough.”

I looked up at him. “It has to be.”

“Why, Elle?” He demanded. “Why does it have to be all?”

“Because,” I cried, honest. “It’s all I have!”

“I don’t believe that.”

“Believe it. I barely have enough of myself for me. I don’t have enough for anyone else.”

He rubbed his face. “Because of your ex?”

“No, Dan,” I said more kindly that I’d thought I could. “Not because of him.”

He stared at me, seeming lost. “Did he hurt you? Physically, I mean.”

That surprised me. “No. Why would you think that?”

He lifted his hand, fast, and watched me flinch. “Because of that.”

I shook my head. “No. He never hit me, if that’s what you mean.”

“But someone did.”

“My mother has,” I told him. “Not for a long time.”

I could see he thought he was getting an insight from my admission, though he couldn’t know my mother smacking me around was the smallest piece of my life’s fucked-up puzzle. His expression softened, like he understood.

“Don’t pity me,” I said sharply.

“I’m not.”

“She stopped when I got big enough to hit her back.” I watched him again, taking a perverse pleasure in revealing this small truth.

Cocktail party secrets. The sort of things people reveal over drinks to strangers because it makes them seem open. I’ve always thought if someone reveals that their mother smacked them or their daddy drank too much to a stranger, what sorts of darker, more awful secrets are they hiding? I waited for him to tell me about his own horrid childhood, because it’s what people do. Share the bad things that have happened to them to make you feel better. I’ll show you mine if you show me yours.

“I’m sorry that happened to you. Not sorry for you.”

“Bad things happen,” I said. “Every day, all the time. To lots of people. She never chased me around with a butcher knife or anything.”

“And yet you still flinch.”

I shrugged. “You’re angry and you’re bigger than I am. Some things are habit.”

He sighed. “What’d your boyfriend do? Cheat on you?”

“No.”

“But he broke up with you.”

The longer we talked the less urgent I felt to make him leave. He was defusing me in the way he had. Whether it was conscious or not I couldn’t tell, but I wasn’t unaware of it. I knew what he was doing…and as with so many other things we’d done, I let him.

I didn’t want to. I didn’t want to explain myself, to relive the past, to tell him the truth and why I was the way I was. Because the truth was, I might have told him I wanted him to go, but I didn’t really want him to leave.

“We were young. I was nineteen. He was twenty. We met in college. His name was Matthew.”

His name was Matthew, and the first time he kissed me, I thought I’d never be able to breathe again.

“You loved him?” His question sounded tentative.

“I thought I did. I thought he loved me. But what’s love, anyway? A word.”

“It’s a feeling, too.”

“Have you ever been in love?” I shot back.

He didn’t answer for a full minute. “So what happened?”

“He thought I was cheating on him, but I wasn’t. I wouldn’t have.” I narrowed my eyes at Dan, who didn’t seem inclined to disbelieve me. “But he insisted. He’d found some letters he thought were from a lover. He called me a liar, and some other things. Slut, mostly, though being called a liar hurt worse. I should have lied and told him what he wanted to hear, but instead I told him the truth.”

“He didn’t believe you?”

“He did,” I said, thinking about it.

“But if you weren’t cheating—”

“It was a long time ago,” I told him. “And like I said, we were young.”

“And you’re not going to tell me any more.” He frowned.

“No, Dan.”

“And you want me to go.”

I looked into his eyes. “No. I don’t.”

He moved closer, encouraged, and put his hand on my shoulder. “Then what do you want, Elle?”

“I want you not to have to settle,” I told him.

“Is that what you think I’m doing?”

“I know that’s what you’ll be doing. Because if you want more from me, you’re not going to get it.”

He said nothing for a long time. “When I read
The Little Prince,
I thought you must be the rose. You with your four thorns, convincing me you’re able to defend yourself. But now I know you hate roses. So you must be the fox instead. So maybe what you really want is for me to tame you.”

From a lot of men, that speech would have made me laugh, or roll my eyes. Then again, a lot of men wouldn’t have read Antoine de Saint-Exupéry’s classic story of
The Little Prince,
or bothered to try and understand it.

I reached for his hand and held it between both of mine. “The fox tells the Little Prince he is a fox like a hundred thousand other foxes. Just like the flower was like a hundred thousand other flowers.”

Dan tucked a strand of hair behind my ear with the hand I wasn’t holding. “But the fox asked the prince to tame him. To make it so they’d need each other and be unique to each other. And he did it.”

“And then the prince went away, Dan, and left the fox bereft.” I looked down at my hands, holding his.

“Would you be sad if I left you?” He asked me, and at first I wasn’t sure how I would reply.

At last the answer came on breath as tremulous as a breeze wafting curtains from an open window.

“Yes. I would.”

He squeezed my hand. “Then I won’t.”

He pulled me close to him, my head on his shoulder, and for a long time that was all I needed or wanted to do.

I
’d stopped into the break room to fill up my mug with coffee before the afternoon meeting when sex again waylaid me.

To be fair, it wasn’t sex, exactly, but Marcy with waggling eyebrows and a whispered, “I’ve got it!”

She waved me over to the table toward the back, where she’d either been doing loads of cocaine or eating powdered doughnuts again. I looked at the napkin with its telltale evidence and looked for a bakery box, but she was good. All that remained were a few incriminating crumbs.

“What do you have, aside from a sugar high you didn’t share?”

“No,” she said with a meaningful pause to shoot a glance at the floor. “
It
.”

I looked at the bag at her feet. Nondescript brown paper, no logo on the side. The sort of thing porn magazines were delivered in.

Then I knew what it was. The Blackjack. You might think that after so many embarrassing escapades in my life, my blush function would be broken, but sadly, it continues to advertise my least discomfort. Heat spread from my chest, up my throat and all the way to my hairline. Marcy laughed.

“It’s gorgeous,” she told me. “I made sure to bring fresh batteries for you.”

“Thanks. I’m sure it could’ve waited until I got home.”

“Maybe. But I wanted to make sure you could use it right away.” Her blue eyes glinted. “It’s so cute, the way you blush.”

“It’s not cute.” I set down my handful of files on the table and took the package from her. It was heavier than I expected, the cardboard tube unmarked, the same as the bag in which she’d brought it. A thought struck me. “You didn’t…try it out. Did you?”

Her disgusted expression forced a giggle from me. “No, ew, Elle! Ewww!”

“Just checking.”

“Aren’t you going to open it?”

I shook my head. “Not here.”

“Oh, c’mon.”

Marcy should be classified a force of nature. There is no resisting her when she has her mind set on something. All she had to do was give me a look, and my fingers obediently began working the tape covering the box’s lid.

“What do you use, the Jedi mind trick?” I grumbled, slitting the tape and prying open the cardboard flap.

Marcy hooted. “Mmm…Obi-Wan Can-bone-me.”

“God, you’re such a dirty pervert. You’ll make Alec Guinness roll over in his grave.” I pulled open the flap.

Marcy pursed her lips. “I’ll roll Ewan McGregor over, thanks. C’mon, pull it out!”

I looked around the room, but it was still empty. I didn’t hear anyone outside in the hall, either. I looked back at the box and then opened it up all the way.

The Blackjack lay cuddled in its bed of protective bubble wrap. It didn’t look that sexy. In fact, if I hadn’t already known what it was, I might have thought it was a large black candle or something, instead of a phallic-shaped sex toy.

“Take it out!” Marcy bounced with glee, peering over my shoulder “Let’s see!”

“I thought you already saw it,” I said, but obliged her by unfolding the bubble wrap.

“Oooh.” Marcy cooed with pleasure. “It’s so classy, Elle. Just like you.”

“Oh, good Lord, Marcy.” I wanted to clap a hand to my forehead. “Vibrators are not classy!”

“That one is.”

It did have a certain aesthetic charm with its sleek design and deep ebony color. The small, ridged handle, made of molded black plastic to seamlessly match the rest of the device, fit comfortably in my palm. It had weight to it. Solid. For a moment my brain imagined it would make as good a weapon as it would a tool for lovemaking.

“Turn it on!”

“Marcy, no!” I pulled the Blackjack protectively against my chest to keep it out of reach of her grasping hands. “Jeez!”

Laughing, she poked my arm. “Oh, c’mon, Elle! Make sure it works! Here. I put the batteries in the bag.”

She opened the package of batteries with one long fingernail and handed them to me, one by one. They slid into the Blackjack like bullets into a gun, and after a moment the toy rewarded us with a low hum. It buzzed against my palm, tickling.

Marcy giggled. I did too. We hunched like conspirators over it, Marcy making whispered lewd comments and me shaking my head.

“Ladies?”

I clutched the still-working vibrator against my chest, my wrist hastily twisting to turn it off. The voice belonged to Lance Smith, one of the Smiths in Smith, Smith, Smith and Brown. He was the youngest Smith, the third, and a nice guy with a family of three gap-toothed children and a plump wife who sometimes brought him lunch. She liked expensive chocolate truffles from Sweet Heaven. He was also my boss. I definitely did not want him to see my deviant little dildo.

“Lance,” Marcy said. “Time for the meeting?”

“Yep. Elle, you’ve got the files on the charity information, right?”

“Sure, Lance,” I told him cheerfully without turning around.

“Great. Oh, we’re meeting in the big room today. Dad’s coming. See you there in five.”

Dad was the senior Smith. Walter. He’d retired two years before but liked to keep active with the firm’s charitable contributions. He, too, was a nice man. I didn’t want him to see my sex toy, either.

“We’d better get over there.” Marcy’s eyes danced with amusement. “We don’t want to keep Walt waiting.”

That wouldn’t have been a good idea. And since my office was on the other side of the building, away from the meeting room, that meant I’d have to find a place to stash the Blackjack until afterward. I looked around, but putting it in the cupboard was too risky. My luck, someone would go looking for more creamer and find my Blackjack instead.

“Put it back in the box and just carry it with you,” Marcy suggested as I looked around the room. “Nobody will know what it is.”

It was the best suggestion, and I enfolded it back into the bubble wrap only to discover it no longer fit back into the box correctly. Voices in the hall alerted me to our coworkers heading down to the meeting room. Time didn’t allow for vibrator wrestling.

“Just leave off the wrapping. Here.” Marcy took the wrap and tossed it in the garbage while I slid the plastic, already warm from my hand, back into its cardboard sheathe. “All set.”

I tucked in the flap and picked up my folders. “All set.”

Marcy and I didn’t often have much work-related interaction, since she dealt with personal accounts and I handled corporations. One project we were able to work together on was the company’s annual participation in Harrisburg’s Children Are Our Future event. Featuring displays, free food, demonstrations and giveaways by area businesses, the event raised money for children’s charities in the Dauphin County area. I’d been on the planning committee for four years. This year they were asking participating companies not only to pay for booth space, but to make matching donations from their employees.

I settled my things at the table and greeted my coworkers with small talk while we waited for everyone to arrive. Lance caught my eye from across the table and quickly looked away. A few minutes later the rest of the committee had arrived and we began our discussions.

There wasn’t much to plan. We’d reserved the booth space in one of the higher traffic areas of the event, which was going to be set up inside the Strawberry Square shopping center. The indoor mall with its food court and specialty shops had a convoluted layout, and the year before we’d been stuck in a back corner. We’d had to bring home almost our entire supply of goodies.

I listened to reports from the man in charge of setting up and tearing down the booth and from the woman overseeing the handing out of notepads, pens and magnets with the company logo and information to parents. For the children we had balloons and small gift bags stuffed with candy and plastic treats, as well as popcorn. Marcy would be manning the popcorn maker. I was handling the employee contributions and disbursements to the charity Triple Smith was sponsoring.

“Elle?” Walter Smith beamed at me from his chair at the head of the table. “What have you got for us?”

I shifted the box with my Blackjack inside it and flipped open my folder. I cleared my throat. I knew all of these people—some rather better than others—and yet I still felt awkward about speaking in front of them all. It was the way they stared, like my words mattered.

“The past four years we’ve built a good relationship with the Capital Area Sexual Abuse Awareness Foundation,” I said. “Because CASAAF isn’t a government-funded program, they continue to need our support. Last year they used the money we donated to purchase anatomically correct dolls that allow children to role-play their situations if they’re unable to articulate them.”

I paused, clearing my throat again, and wishing I’d thought to grab a bottle of water instead of a mug of now-cold coffee. “They also used the money to implement training in their volunteers to utilize the dolls. This year Barry Leis, the director, told me they intend to put the funds toward a series of summer camp programs about personal body safety.”

“Very good,” murmured Walter.

“Are there any objections to continuing naming CASAAF our beneficiary for this event?” I looked around the table, expecting as I did every year to get opposition and again having none. It reminded me I should have more faith in my coworkers. That people really do care.

We briefly discussed the possibility of having a bake sale to raise employee donations that Triple Smith would then match. I didn’t bake. Marcy made a face, too. We decided on a candy sale instead.

Walter gave me another warm smile as I closed my folder. “Thank you, Elle. We really appreciate the work you’ve done toward this matter.”

His praise warmed me, and I returned his smile. Then it was Lance’s turn. The buzzing began when he stood up to go over the logistics of the event, who’d use what company vehicle to transport which items, who’d be in charge of petty cash, who’d be in the office on that day and who’d be at Strawberry Square. At first nobody else noticed, though the instant the low hum began I’d sat up straight in my seat. I deliberately did not look at the box containing my Blackjack.

I couldn’t look at Marcy, either, who sat across from me. The buzzing stopped after a few seconds. I relaxed. Lance droned on, using his pointer to go over his lists up on the whiteboard.

The buzzing started again. Louder, this time. Marcy gave a strangled giggle she turned into a sort of snorting cough. My entire body went rigid and the only reason I managed not to let out a squeak was because I bit my tongue so hard I thought I tasted blood. Lance looked over at the two of us, his smooth forehead wrinkling a bit, but he kept talking.

Marcy was trying to get my attention, but I was trying to surreptitiously shift the Blackjack box so it would stop on its own. All I did was make it worse.

Marcy started giggling. People were staring, curious. I bit down on my lower lip and closed my fingers around the box. The vibration got louder. It sounded like a hive of bees.

There was no mistaking the interest the noise had garnered. Not so long ago the situation would have sent me into a panic. This time, all I could do was stifle my increasingly desperate giggles with my hand while I tried to shake the box and make it stop.

Lance paused in his speech and turned around again. Everyone stared. I grabbed the box and shook it, hard, which set the Blackjack into an even greater indignancy of rattling.

“It’s a gift,” I explained lamely over the sound. “For a friend. One of those automated cat toys….”

Marcy burst out into guffaws and slapped the table. This wasn’t an unexpected response from her, so nobody seemed to mind. On the other hand, I’m not sure anyone there had ever seen me react so extremely to anything.

Something about laughter is so contagious it infects anyone who hears it. Marcy’s guffaws blended with Brian Smith’s raised-brow chuckles and Walter Smith’s bemused snicker, as well as the laughter of everyone else at the table. Including mine. I shook the box again, irritating it further, then banged it on the table.

It fell silent while we all still laughed. I laughed harder because none of the others in the room had any idea about what, exactly, had set us off. The room shared five more minutes of collective good feeling before we tapered off into small chuckles and got back to business. Lance finished up the meeting and we dispersed. I made sure to handle the box carefully.

“Elle. Can I see you a minute?” Lance asked as the rest of the room filed out.

I hesitated. By unspoken agreement, Lance and I kept our interaction as limited as possible. He didn’t need to oversee my work but was available on the rare occasions I needed input, and he did my annual review in which I always got the highest rating and an above-average raise. For him to hold me back after a meeting meant he had something to discuss about my work, or so I thought.

“Sure.” I smiled at him carefully.

He waited until the room had cleared of everyone else before he spoke. “I’ve never seen you laugh like that.”

“Oh. I’m sorry.” I sobered. “It was inappropriate. I apologize.”

Lance shook his head. “No. You don’t have to. I just wanted to tell you I’ve noticed you’ve been a little…different…the past few months.”

I kept a frown from creasing my face. “Oh? If it’s an issue with my performance—”

“No, Elle,” Lance interrupted gently. “Your work’s been fine. Great, actually. The clients love you. We’re nothing but pleased with your work.”

“I see.” I nodded as though I did, when in fact, I wasn’t quite sure where he was going with this and it made me nervous.

Lance smiled at me, and it was easy to see how much he resembled his father. “I just meant that you seem to be…happier. Lately. That’s all. We like happy employees.”

I shifted my folders to give my hands something to do. “I’ve always been happy working here, Lance. You should know that. Triple Smith is a great company to work for.”

He beamed. “We try to make it so. But it’s not just that, Elle.”

He didn’t say more, and I didn’t need him to. We shared a look, one he broke first, and I understood what he meant. The understanding softened my voice when I answered.

“Thanks, Lance,” I said. “Yes. I’m happy.”